Pizza With Judas
by gypsy season
Summary: All it takes is a little pizza for House to realise he still hasn't forgiven Wilson, and for Wilson to realise that it's not as simple as he thought. Spoilers from the Tritter arc to HalfWit


House imagined that pizza with a friend was so much easier when your only friend hadn't sold you out to the cops.

Pizza with a friend must have been so much easier for Jimmy; he didn't have his only friend sell him out to the cops.

House was out of jail and no longer under investigation, no longer trapped in the twisted plot of an irrationally obsessive cop and the innocent doctors who hate him. Tritter, he had been able to handle. He could have gotten out of that situation just fine on his own.

But Wilson, he could have helped when instead he chose to hide. He could have stood by him when instead he chose to head for the hills, and leave him to fend for himself. He hurt House to save whatever was left of himself, and now he wants to go out for pizza?

Of course he was being irrational, but so was House. Wilson thought, naïve as he was, that they were past this plateau, that their friendship was still intact

People are always more depressed in the spring than in the winter; when the weather is warm and comfortable, there is always a sense of foreboding in knowing that winter was just 3 seasons away. It was for the same reason that House was even angrier with Wilson now than he ever had been.

They had been at war, and House had been furious, but nothing was more infuriating than Wilson's newfound hope that their friendship could live through anything.

House didn't need it, though. All Wilson ever seemed to do was bug him about his leg and his vicodin intake. What kind of friends did that? If Wilson was so hard pressed to make their friendship work, he didn't seem to be putting in too much effort.

But in reality, House had no idea how to deal with Wilson. This was clearly another attempt to get past the hard times, but like all good times, they weren't meant to last forever. He used to think that wasn't fair, but over the bad years and the worse years, he came to learn that the more you let yourself enjoy, the worse it would be when the good's time was up.

Pizza, though, was something of a habit, after takeout and ordering in became the only way for House to eat after the infarction. He lived well off of cold Chinese and pizza; there was no problem with that. He just didn't want to share anything with Wilson.

--

"I need you to come over," he said, his voice tight with pain.

"I'll be right there." Wilson knew this voice all too well, and practically ran to his car, imagining a whole manner of terrible circumstances that House had gotten himself into.

Contrary to how desperate he sounded over the phone, House was lounging peacefully on the couch, legs propped up on the table, when Wilson let himself in with his key.

"House, are you…" he trailed off, panting.

"My god," House said, craning his neck around to see him, "did you run here?"

Wilson looked, as he often did, confused about whatever was going on in House's head. "Are you hurt?"

"Well," House stretched, arching his back up from the couch, "I had a little run-in with a scalpel lost me about half my thigh."

"When you called, I thought-"

"Or would you say it's more like a third? I'm horrible at eyeballing things like this."

Feeling his cheeks beginning to flush, Wilson tried harder to justify his urgency without getting too angry. "When you called, I thought it was a bad day. I thought you were hurt."

"Of course you did," House said plainly. "Otherwise you never would have come over."

It wasn't nearly as bad as faking cancer, but it was upsetting enough without having to bring up painful memories of hands clenching muscle, fingers digging into the skin…

"This is not entirely unlike you," Wilson said.

"It makes me lovable."

"So tell me, what was so important that you couldn't just bother me about it tomorrow?"

"You know that whole pizza with a friend junk you've been trying to turn me on to? Dinner with a friend, movie, date, whatever?" In response to Wilson's unchanged expression, House bent at the waist in a parody of Wilson's little bow he did that day at work. "I thought I might give it a try."

"You'd rather gouge your eyes out with your mother's brooch," Wilson said, shifting anxiously from leg to leg.

"There's pizza in the kitchen, Creon. Except there's only one slice, and it's for me."

"What do I do?"

"You know where the pots and pans are. I didn't feel like the responsibility of your feeding habits should rest on my shoulders.

"You're lucky I already ate."

"You haven't eaten since around 2:40. You didn't have time to stop for food if you were racing across Princeton, wetting yourself from excitement that you might get to touch my leg tonight." House raised his eyebrows.

"That," Wilson decided, "is creepy. Your intellect moves in mysterious ways."

House made a face at the terrible joke, but muttered a halfhearted "it's alright," anyway.

By this time, Wilson had made his way into the kitchen. Like most other conversations that took place in House's living room, they involved Wilson in a steady orbit around the couch in the center, with House staying put. "It's also annoying."

"The fact that you read like a book, or that I didn't get you any food?"

Wilson stops, and his eyebrows crease, perplexed. "I'd sound like an idiot if I said I was upset about the food."

House nodded. "Go on."

"If I admit… the other thing, that just makes you the winner."

"You love this," House said, referring to Wilson's penchant for psychoanalysis. "I really do think you picked the wrong specialty."

"Everything is a game for you, so instead of trying to figure out what's making me upset," Wilson snapped his finger and pointed at House, smiling confidently, "The question is; what's making _you _upset!"

House's shoulders slumped, but he had to at least admit defeat. "Looks like we have ourselves a winner. You win an all-paid vacation for 2 to Sesame Place." It was a lot better than actually having to admit what he was upset about.

Wilson turned away from the living room and picked up the greasy slice of pizza sitting on the counter. He considered just bringing it over to House, because maybe his leg was hurting badly and he didn't want to admit it. But he decided instead to fold the slice in half, shove it as far into his mouth as it would go, and take a huge, obnoxious bite.

House turned just in time to see him rip the gooey lines of cheese from his mouth to the rest of the slice that stayed intact as he pulled the pizza away.

With all the pride of Napoleon, Wilson marched back into the living room, dropped the rest of the slice unceremoniously in House's lap, and went to sit across the room in the lounge chair.

Glaring like the pro he was, House folded the pizza and took a bite. "You take away my pills," he said around the mouthful. "Then you sell me out to the Nazis. You send me to rehab, leave me on the floor to die of an overdose, see that I go to both rehab and jail. Twice to jail!"

"I bailed you out of jail the first time," Wilson said, suddenly defensive, and still chewing. "It wasn't my fault you were speeding."

"No. Just that I didn't have a prescription. And now," House said, having only been building up for the grand finale, "you steal my pizza."

"Oh, buy another one. You make enough money," Wilson said.

"Judas," House muttered, reaching for the remote on the coffee table.

"So does that make you Jesus?"

"You bet your ass it does," House said with a smile that set Wilson on edge.

"God help us."

"Good thing you don't believe in me."

I do, Wilson wanted to say. Instead, he got up again, went back into the kitchen, and came out with two beers, and didn't complain when House, after he was done with his, reached over and snatched whatever was left of his own.


End file.
